RED OAK (590 alt., 484 pop.), is a small farming center which was named for a large red oak tree that stood in the center of the town when this region was the Choctaw Nation. The Indians held district court there and used the oak as a whipping post.

The most serious political disturbance in the history of the Choctaw Nation had its finale at Red Oak when Silan Lewis was executed for his part in the Nationalist uprising, following the election of 1892. The fullblood Lewis, who had been sheriff of his own district, upheld the traditional Choctaw honor when he came striding in from his woodland home on the appointed day, November 5, 1894, and quietly sat with back against the tree to await his death from the firing squad.

On the Craig mess, today's talking point is: "Why do the Republicans always give in to these accusations? Why don't we hold tough and fight?"

Wrong question.

The right question is: Why do we always hold tough long enough to reach the point of scandal?

If we have any principles at all, anything we really want to accomplish by holding office, why do we allow so many easily compromised politicians to stay on our team?

In other words: Why do we enjoy being blackmailed?

It's a fact that the sexual blackmailers are on the left now. Wasn't always the case*, but it's emphatically true in the last 20 years. Unless there's a way to purge the feminist and gay activists, we simply have to accept this as part of the conditions of the battlefield, and adjust our strategy accordingly.

What's the right strategy? If we have any principles at all, if we want to be free to push those principles, we need to thank the sexual blackmailers for helping us to clean up our team. Thank them for providing a useful signal.

The main editorialist at Catholic World News has been running an informative series of comparisons between the Boy Scouts and the Roman leadership. His point: The sexual blackmailers have been pushing the Scouts for many years to Celebrate Diversity by taking in more homosexual scoutmasters, and more generally to abandon Christianity and carry the leftist torch. The Scouts haven't given in, and the blackmailers haven't even gained any traction. The Roman church (in America anyway) has adopted nearly all of the usual leftist principles.

What's the diff? The Scouts are perhaps the only major institution that still puts reputation first. They reject a scoutmaster who shows any sort of dubious tendencies, and they kick him out before his dubious tendencies can do any damage either to the boys or to the group's reputation. The Roman church follows the modern course: hold tough, use Due Process as an excuse, keep numerical "power" at the cost of total blackmail and total loss of principles and credibility.

We're seeing similar failures in many realms. Astronauts in diapers, baseball players in steroids. We've lost the guild mentality, the idea that your primary job is to maintain the reputation and grandeur of the profession. We've replaced it with a quantifiable lust for numerical and tactical wins, which aren't even wins.

When you know players will be tested for drugs and disqualified, the team doesn't really gain anything by keeping a Barry Bonds on the roster. When you know politicians will be tested for sexual hypocrisy and disqualified, the team doesn't really gain anything by keeping a Larry Craig on the roster.

= = = = =

* In fact, the all-time champion sexual blackmailer in American politics was good old J. Edgar, who was also the all-time champion anti-Communist. I'm not sure when the practice shifted over to the left, but it must have been after Hoover died.

Via Int'l Herald Tribune: 8 released now, the remainder (presumably in a different place) to come out shortly.

Moral of the story: Talking with kidnappers works. Sometimes.

We need to learn from Korea and rethink our standard "no-negotiation" policy, which isn't truthful in any case.

The basic question is always means vs ends. Our end is to preserve our own kind (Christians and their allies). The "no-talk" policy often destroys our own without gaining anything meaningful from the enemy. If talking preserves more of our own, it should be at least an openly available option.

The worst thing about these scandals is not what happens after the revelation, the predictable circus of prurient chortling from the left and prurient smarminess from the right.

The worst thing is what happens before the revelation. It's hardly news that living a secret life guarantees blackmail; yet for some reason our elite classes have forgotten this basic fact of human nature.

I remembered mentioning Craig once here ... looking back, I find that I was disgusted by his surrender to the ACLU on the important point of Patriot Act wiretapping. Now the reason for the surrender is obvious. If Larry Craig hadn't been living a secret dirty life, there would have been one more firm supporter of the Patriot Act.

= = = = =

Back to basics: What was the key to America's success, back in the days when it did succeed? Not freedom, though a certain amount of well-placed freedom was important. Not capitalism, though a certain amount of well-regulated capitalism was important. Not education: very few of our best innovators and leaders finished high school, let alone Harvard. No, what made us work was a dense web of 'mediating organizations', well described by Tocqueville.

Every trade had its informal and unofficial guild, which dispensed both carrots and sticks. Every religion had not only churches but social groupings, and every race and ethnic group had lodges. The guild usually served as a mutual assistance organization, taking in rather hefty dues and providing various forms of insurance and help for members. In return, it required ethical and professional behavior. You were supposed to be a positive example to the public, and you were expected to listen to the advice of older members and help develop younger members.

My working life came largely after guilds had turned obsolete, but I was involved in one such organization for a while. Radio amateurs were ably represented by the ARRL (American Radio Relay League). The ARRL took care of testing and training young amateurs in both electronics and ethical practice; it 'defrocked' hams who violated the norms; and it organized hams for emergency service in disaster situations. All of those functions were quasi-governmental, and the FCC happily allowed ARRL to perform them.

After 40 years of inattention, I still remember looking up to the ARRL with a sense of grandeur, and I remember the solid pleasure of being supported and shaped by a benevolent association.

ARRL's symbol nicely expresses the function of any guild. The antenna at the top picks up new signals; the tuning coil in the middle keeps the signals within a narrow bandwidth where they can be useful; and the ground at the bottom provides both a standard of reference and a place to dump unwanted signals.

I haven't been in touch with the whole subject for many years, so I presume the ARRL still exists but is no longer allowed to interfere with FEMA's all-encompassing and all-destroying incompetence.

Since Lenin began his grand takeover in 1920, the government has grabbed both the welfare and social enforcement functions, and most guilds were unfortunately willing to let it happen. Now trade associations no longer mediate between the members and the public at large; they only serve to lobby for more federal subsidies and special exemptions to all-encompassing and all-destroying regulations.

Legislators and judges, operating under anti-discrimination statutes, have snatched away the internal regulation functions of guilds. Every aspect of behavior is now subject to pure governmental force. We no longer walk in harness; we no longer sense the gentle rein-pull of our associations or churches; we just careen and skid through life, waiting for the random and arbitrary arrest, which may or may not bear any connection to a genuinely bad act.

Kafka wins.

And what was the guild for legislators? Political parties formerly served the mediating functions of a guild. Filtered out bad apples before the arrest and scandal went public; dispensed favors to loyal voters; developed young candidates. Now, thanks to 70 years of "reforms", they only gather money and buy advertising. But how can we do without advertising? Well, advertising wasn't quite so important when the candidates were better men, and when loyalty was rewarded directly.

Vick: GGGHHHHRRRRRRAAAAAGGGHHH!!!! [Leaps across the desk, tears Kennedy's head off, then hangs him from the chandelier to bleed out.]

This would be not only legal restitution but a beautiful spiritual restitution. Arabs hate dogs [i.e. civilization] even more than Vick does. By torturing Arabs, he would be eliminating the worst enemies of dogs [i.e. civilization].

And a side benefit: Vick is an Authentic African-American, i.e. gangster. Thus the leftists would be utterly unable to criticize anything he does, because the prime directive of leftists is to Celebrate Authenticity at all costs.

I don't do 'shop talk' here often, but this was just a perfect bit of accidental Murphy's Law humor. Recently mentioned my long-lasting and artistically satisfying project to model the Nelson Dream Village tourist lodge. It's reached the point where I'm about ready to submit the set to online graphics stores for testing and sale. So I decided to rig up a series of demo pics to stir up some interest, and maybe get a couple of acquaintances to run a beta test before submitting to the store.

First a nice outdoor shot, with the Musical Fountain emphasized. The fountain was the centerpiece of the real Dream Village, and the truly unique part of Colonel Nelson's dream. Lots of tourist lodges in the '30s had charming rock-faced cottages; only the Dream Village had a music and light show every evening in the summer.

Apparently the original mechanism ran the fountain and lights through a standard 'ringing the changes' pattern, while Colonel Nelson's granddaughter Beth took charge of the turntable, favoring Strauss waltzes. I've done the Colonel one better in digital form, with an animated mechanism that 'dances' the fountain and lights to the music.

Second, the interior of the cottage looking toward the kitchen and bath. Since no interior pix of the actual Dream Village are available, I've used appropriate period furniture, as seen in other motels of the time.

Third, we'll turn toward the front window and wait for the fountain to start up. I activate the water and lights, and ....

CUT!

Apparently the water was improperly centered on the house instead of the fountain.

Obviously we're not ready for testing and sale yet, if Murphy's Law can bite me so easily. An unsuspecting buyer would have even worse problems!

= = = = =

Much later note: Most of the Dream Village set has ended up as part of my free Route 66 packages. The cottage is here and much of the furniture is here. The fountain isn't part of either set; I decided it wasn't up to the same quality standards.

Beck's radio show is running a wonderful parody of Shameless John Edwards, but they've missed the biggest chutzpah of all.

Edwards is DIRECTLY AND PERSONALLY responsible for a significant part of our health care crisis. Obstetricians are wasting money on tests, doing far more C-Sections than necessary, and simply leaving the practice in droves, because of the pattern of lawsuits that Edwards started. And now Edwards has the MONUMENTAL GALL to complain about the costly and inefficient medical system.

This actually beats the old joke about killing your parents and pleading for mercy on grounds that you're an orphan.

Truly, the only way out of the mess is to take up full and total government-owned medicine. That will disentangle the awful and unmanageable semi-monopolistic / semi-governmental maze we have now. After that, we'll at least be able to see and measure what's really happening; and the result quite possibly will be better than the current setup. It really can't be worse.

And there is justice in the universe. When the system is owned by the government, the legal principle of Sovereign Immunity will apply, and IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO SUE DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS! Giving Edwards what he wants [or claims to want] will put him and all his evil cohort out of a job!

Not quite as satisfying as the Shakespeare Solution, but still pretty damn good.

That one fact, all by itself, makes the change worthwhile. That one fact will allow doctors to return to common sense, and will allow the whole system to work better.

= = = = =

While I'm ranting on this subject:

The brand-R talking point vendors always say: "If you like the way the Post Office or the DMV treats you, then you'll love socialized medicine."

This comparison may work for some people, but it sure as hell doesn't work for me. In my adult life, say 35 years, I've used private doctors about 8 times, and used emergency rooms about 4 times. My experience with private doctors has been worse than the DMV every single time. Long waits, disdainful and contemptuous attitudes, no attempt to listen to what I'm saying, and worst of all, bad advice and wrong diagnoses. Emergency room experience was actually better: more respect, more attention, and correct diagnoses.

So would I rather have DMV-type health care? Hell yes. The DMV treats you with contempt, but at least you get a valid license at the end of the process!

A public school teacher was arrested this morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the man, who has not been identified, is believed to be a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement and has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a problem for us," Gonzales said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.

Some of the puns are lame, but overall it's a good parody, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it actually happened. Homeland Security is easily stupid enough to decide that a slide rule must be some kind of weapon.

And I wouldn't be surprised if G W Vichy decided to go against Mathematicians instead of Mohammedans. Our real enemy has strong lobbies in the form of the ACLU and federal judges, and Vichy is more inclined to obey judges than to fight the real enemy.

Going after mathematicians would have the added advantage of pleasing all the voters who really count in Karl Rove's calculus: Women, hispanics, and blacks.

And while we're talking about sophisticated harmonies from the '30s.....

A passage from the WPA Guide to Kansas, written in 1938 as the Dust Bowl was still going strong.

Recent years of almost unprecedented drought have led to the often expressed belief that the climate of Kansas is changing. Geologists and meteorologists, however, point out that weather runs in cycles, the most pronounced being about a third of a century in length. Conditions during a cycle are easily mistaken by laymen for permanent changes. Despite year by year fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, recorded evidence shows that general climatic conditions remain unchanged.

The scientists of 1938 had knowledge, logic and common sense. They understood the principle of the wheel or the wave: what goes around comes around. Today's "scientists" have lost that basic understanding. Like a newborn babe, they see something going up and they assume it's going up forever.

And the third of a century has continued with fair precision. 1938 was a year of floods and droughts, including a terrible flood in Los Angeles and a hurricane that flattened Providence, RI with a HUNDRED-FOOT-TALL surge. Add 35 and you get 1973, another year of floods, supercells and tornados. Add 34 to that, and you get 2007.

Well, what do you know. Those old benighted scientists just might be right. Things do run in cycles. Amazing.

Satire aside, I'm desperately frightened to see our "keepers of knowledge" dragging us down into a Dark Age. It took several centuries for the learning of Greece and Rome to fade into raw superstition; our Communist masters have accomplished the same level of destruction in a few decades.

The DeMarcos went on to a long career. The Pickens Sisters only performed for four years; apparently they had their own radio show at some point. Jane Pickens, the eldest, carried her fame into a long and distinguished life in New York high society, even running for Congress on the Conservative line in 1972 against Ed Koch!

= = = = =

A bit later: An unparalleled collection of '30s movie clips on Youtube contains the original 'Good Morning Glory', with the Pickens doing only some of the singing. If you don't smile for several days after seeing this clip, you're either totally Stalinized or dead.

While the Korean missionaries are demonstrating the difference between Allah and God, the difference between Jihad and saintliness, the Roman leadership is trying hard to ignore or blur the difference.

What is the difference? Easy.

A jihadi sacrifices himself to kill infidels.

A saint sacrifices himself to save infidels.

Dutch bishop Tiny Muskens has quickly become infamous for telling his parishioners to call God "Allah", as a way of pacifying the Mohammedans. I wonder if any Dutch priests in 1942 told their people to refer to Christ as "Thor", in order to pacify the Nazis? Somehow I doubt it. They were too busy hiding and saving Jews.

Big Daddy-O Benedict is not quite so thoroughly muddled: he does seem to recognize that the Church has enemies ....

Reflecting on the readings from the book of Revelation, the Pope proclaimed that “The love of God is more powerful than the materialism of this age.”

Benedict spoke specifically about the figures of the dragon and the woman clothed with the sun in Revelation 12. He explained that in the days of the early Christians “the evil red dragon was the anti-Christian Roman Empire and the Church, which is embodied by the woman, … outlasted the persecution of the dragon.”

He said that the dragon also represents the great dictatorships of the past century: Nazism and Stalinism and again the Church survived. Even in these dark circumstances the woman, that is, the Church, survived. In the end, “love proved stronger than hate.”

Hey, this is starting to sound like the courageous Benedict who appeared ever so briefly at Regensburg. Is he coming back toward Pius XII? Is he going to identify the enemy? Let's continue listening:

“Today the dragon exists in the materialist ideologies which tell people that it’s absurd to think about God; to observe the commandments, which are described as outdated; and that they should grab what they can.”

Nope. Still missing in action. This is 1957 stuff, sort of like Stan Freberg's parodies of over-commercialized Santa Claus. Materialism always pulls Christians downward, but materialism is not killing nuns and missionaries RIGHT NOW in places like Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Taliban kidnappers have declared that negotiations with the Korean government for the release of 19 Koreans held in Afghanistan have collapsed. Some reports said the Taliban threatened to kill one or two more hostages unless Korea makes a genuine offer by Monday. Since freeing two women, the Taliban said they will kill no more hostages while negotiations are under way as talks with a Korean delegation were going smoothly.

But in a phone interview with the Chosun Ilbo’s local correspondent, the purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi blamed the Korean government for the collapse of the negotiations, saying the militant group no longer expects Korea to persuade the Afghan government to release Taliban prisoners in exchange for the hostages.

...

Ahmadi said unless the South Korean side gets more active in negotiations than it has been, “one or two hostages could be killed.” ...

Meanwhile, one hostage gave up her chance to return home to another woman when the Taliban freed two female hostages last week. The woman asked the kidnappers to release the other woman instead of her, saying her health was getting better.

Polistra is happy that the roulette tables in the Wall Street Casino are burning. Maybe it will finally bring some reality to the elite coverage of economic conditions.

No, it won't.

Nevertheless, we are still moving toward a two-part economy, like most Latin American and African countries, and like J. P. Morgan's 1890 America. The elite barons, both 'Left' and 'Right', live in gated compounds with private security, free to move to Dubai after they have shorted America into submission. The masses have their bread and circuses.

Yesterday the distinction between Upstairs and Downstairs showed brightly, with a glint of irony, when Glenn Beck interviewed Peter Schiff, a pessimistic expert.

Transcript of relevant section, from GlennBeck.com:

SCHIFF: Well, it`s going to be worse, certainly, than the 1970s. We -- we`re going to have to pay the price for years of living beyond our means, while we were spending all this money and consuming, our real industrial base was disintegrating beneath our feet. So we`ve been living off of borrowed money and an artificial standard of living, and that`s all going to come to an end.

Just like an individual, if you quit your job and live off of a credit card, eventually, you know, the bills -- the bills come due, and you have to downsize your lifestyle. That`s what`s going to happen. But you know, you talked about the 1930s, where if you were in cash, you did well.

Unfortunately, this time around, our money, the U.S. dollar, is going to collapse, as well. So simply having money in the bank...

BECK: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on just a second. Peter, you honestly are sitting here making the prediction that the U.S. dollar is going to collapse?

SCHIFF: It could happen over the course of just a couple of years. Maybe even sooner.

Schiff's diagnosis is exactly right. Under both brand-R and brand-D "Free Traders", i.e. Chinese agents, we've sold our industries and patents to China, and allowed our own factories to disappear. The irony: this process actually does "hurt minorities and women most", because as I've discussed before, it removes low-skilled men from the pool of providers and decent husbands, leaving them no option but crime; which in turn removes low-skilled women from the pool of full-time mothers, requiring them to work at WalMart.

Well then, does Schiff have a good solution? Yes indeed.

BECK: I`ve got 30 seconds, and we could spend an hour on this. What exactly is the average person supposed to do?

SCHIFF: Well, I mean, what you could do is get rid of your dollars while you can. I mean, that`s what I`m helping my clients do at Euro Pacific. We`ve been doing that for years. We`re selling dollars, and we`re accumulating foreign assets. We`re investing in Asia and Europe. We`re trying to get rid of a currency that`s on the verge of a collapse.

BECK: Holy cow. Peter, thank you very much.

Get rid of dollars??? Sell dollars???

Telegram for you, Schiff: this phrase is not even comprehensible, let alone helpful advice, to the average man.

This may well be useful advice for the Wall Street Casino Bettors who are ready to move to Dubai, but it's several universes removed from the average man.

Let's say you've been spotting dog poop in one corner of your yard. You suspect the neighbor's chihuahua, but you haven't actually seen him pooping. This morning you see him doing what dogs do, in the same corner of the yard where you've been seeing and smelling the poop. The next morning you see him in action again, and again the next evening.

A normal rational human, or a normal scientist, will conclude that the neighbor's chihuahua is the actual source of the earlier poops, which were small enough to be his product, not likely to be Great Dane poop. The scientist will use more precise measurements and more statistics, but the basic inductive reasoning is the same.

Not so for a Paranoid Religious Zealot. The PRZ will notice the chihuahua depositing poop, and instantly conclude that all chihuahuas have Jew-chips implanted in their tiny brains, which force them to poop in a Jew-coded way. He will then carefully scoop up the Jew Code Defecatorium, bring it into the house and try to decode the patterns, and (after appropriate rearrangement) the Jew Code Defecatorium will absolutely verify that the chihuahua is sending secret messages to be read by Jew satellites on Mars, thus passing orders to the guy across the street who is a 32nd Degree Mason and thus undoubtedly an Illuminatus.

= = = = =

Now for an article in latest New Scientist mag, headlined "Sun takes some climate blame, but most is ours."

Most is ours. Does this mean the "scientists" finally have any evidence of the connection between human activity and the earth's temperature? No, it refers to increased factual proof of the sun's connection to global temperatures, followed by a typical piece of Paranoid Religious Zealot "reasoning" by the "scientists".

The actual observation: "Planet-wide heating and cooling of the atmosphere during the 11-year sunspot cycle has been measured for the first time."

Evidence of longer-term solar effects has been clear for many years, but the fine-grained changes in the short 11-year cycle were not large enough to spot easily amid the huge variability caused by all sorts of other stuff. New research has managed to tease out the correlation between sunspot cycles and roughly 0.6 degrees of average variation.

If we had any actual scientists practicing in the climate realm, this observation should put the final nail in the coffin of the idiotic greenhouse "theory", but no.

Here we go on the paranoid merry-go-round:

"What will excite climate scientists most is that Tung and Camp are the first to measure directly how a given change in the amount of heat energy in the atmosphere translates into a change in [worldwide] temperature. Researchers call this the 'climate sensitivity' of the atmosphere, and it is a vital factor in climate research because it determines how fast the planet will warm as a result of climate change.

...

Tung and Camp say that [this correlation] shows that a doubling of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause a warming of between 2.3 and 4.1 degrees C within about a year. They say this makes the lower estimates of some models 'unlikely'. "

And this last point is what has the Gaia-worshipping PRZ's excited. More disaster! More apocalypse! More sin by humans! More reason to exterminate the entire human species! Oh boy!!!

Trying to pry this apart: The facts of this new factual discovery, if they were treated as facts, would help to knock down the global-warming hoax, because the facts make it clear that we are noticeably warmed and cooled by the 11-year solar cycle, along with the already-known longer solar cycles. Rational thinkers would treat this added evidence for solar influence as added evidence for solar influence, just as the observed squatting of the chihuahua is added evidence that the chihuahua is the main influence on your yard's odor.

In turn, this should decrease the credibility of theories about other influences (such as greenhouse gases) because those are not even theories; they are fraudulent superstitions based on a reverse reading of known data.

But that's not how the Gaia-worshippers see it. Instead, they treat these new facts as nothing more than a modified parameter for their fraudulent models, a new code to be fed into the same wild axioms, leading always to the pre-determined conclusion: Exterminate humans! Exterminate humans! Exterminate humans!

The brand-R politicians and commentators are all huffy about the "indignity" of answering Youtube questions. Romney said "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."

Okay, so what kind of question is "dignified" and "becoming"?

Well, we can take George W. Vichy's choices as a standard, since he's the champion when it comes to declaring actions as "unbecoming". He's so dignified that he won't do any of the normal things that leaders do ... such as telling the people what's going on, or telling us when our soldiers gain territory from the enemy.

So which kinds of questions does Vichy happily take? Which category of questioners does he cheerfully josh around and smile with?

Helen Thomas.

David Gregory.

Traitors who should have been imprisoned or hanged long ago.

So this is the Vichy standard.

Traitors are proper and dignified sources of questions, while animated videos are "beneath respect".

What's wrong with this picture, other than every goddamn thing?

= = = = =

Later: Huckabee, appearing on Laura Ingraham's show, separated himself from the defenders of the Imperial Presidency: "I don't mind. I've answered questions from far sillier people than an animated snowman." Must admit I didn't like him much at the start ... he seemed to be mainly about losing weight ... but he's definitely gaining points for leadership and clarity.

Taliban kidnappers on Monday released two Korean hostages, Kim Gina (32) and Kim Kyung-ja (37), after 26 days in captivity in Afghanistan. Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong on Monday officially confirmed the women had been released and handed over to Korean officials. Cho said the two women, who were reported to be ill, were now in a safe place under the protection of Korean authorities. He added that Seoul was relieved that some of the 21 surviving hostages have been released. A government official said the two are in an area under the control of an allied forces reconstruction team in Ghazni Province.

The next part is not strictly newsworthy, but I find it interesting in two ways:

Kim Gina, who teaches computerized animation at a junior college, reportedly used her vacation to take part in a short-term missionary trip to Afghanistan. Her brother Ji-woong (35) said he was worried every time he saw media reports about the health of the hostages, since Gina had left for the trip before a back ailment was fully cured. “I was worried that she hadn’t brought enough medicine with her, even though she needs continuous treatment using painkillers.” Kim Kyung-ja had told her family she was going to Dubai to stop them worrying.

First, you'll find very few Christians, let alone saintly Christians, among computerized animation people in the West. Nearly all of them are orthodox West-hating Osama-loving Leninists. I wonder if the mandatory connection between art and Communism hasn't been formed in Korea? If so, it's another reason for us to listen closely to Korea.

Second, "Kim Kyung-ja told her family she was going to Dubai to stop them worrying."

A few days ago, someone at NRO mentioned W. Cleon Skousen as an important anti-Communist intellectual. I'd never heard of the guy, and his name was so wonderfully clattery that I just had to look him up. Turns out he was an FBI agent in the early '50s, who had helped to penetrate the Commies.

Later he left the Bureau and joined the Birchers, before the Birchers themselves were penetrated by the Party and turned away from effective anti-Communism to stupid CFR/Illuminati conspiracies.

Skousen wrote an astonishingly prophetic document, and I'm amazed that I haven't read it before. It seems to be distributed widely around the Web.

Callers to C-Span and various radio shows often read other lists of supposed Commie goals, which are either wrong or clearly fictional. This list is drawn from Skousen's FBI experience, its date of publication has been verified, and nearly everything in it has come to pass.

Many of the items were not at all obvious in 1958, and must have seemed like wild paranoid thinking to those who read it before 1970. A few items were specific to Soviet practice, and thus became obsolete when Reagan, the only pro-American president since 1958, tossed the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history.

= = = = =

Here's the list, with my comments in brackets after each item.

1958 CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

[Done!]

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

[Done, with cherries on top! See Comrade Bush dealing with Persia... ]

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament (by) the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

[Comrade Carter accomplished this task.]

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

[This has shifted from Russia to China. Both Bushes and Clinton have been working on this one with tremendous results for China's benefit.]

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

[Obsolete; the lend-lease program went away.]

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

[Done!]

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

[Comrade Nixon accomplished this one.]

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

[Done but obsolete]

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

[Done but obsolete]

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

[Done but obsolete]

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.

[See blue berets.]

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

[Obviously worked; CPUSA is still going strong, mainly doing business now as "United for Justice and Peace" or variations thereof.]

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

[Loyalty oaths were still in use in 1958, so this must have been accomplished later; I'm not sure exactly which Comrade was responsible. Wasn't terribly important in the big picture.]

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

[Shifted to China with enthusiasm, and added copyrights as well.]

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

[Done, again with the brief interregnum of Reagan.]

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

[This is the most dramatically prophetic item to my thinking. Was a completely alien concept in '58, and now it's the sole purpose of the Federal courts.]

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

[Done.]

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

[Done, but now being resisted in a minor way by 'alternative' conservative papers on some campuses.]

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs of organizations which are under Communist attack.

[Shifted in recent years from student riots to black riots, thanks to the great work of Comrades Piven and Cloward, implemented by Comrade LBJ.]

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

[Done.]

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

[Done. Not just key positions but all positions.]

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

[This one caught me by surprise. I thought the movement toward ugliness was a conformist tendency among the artsy types who also happened to be leftists. I didn't realize it was Party policy!]

[This one is still being worked on, as you can tell by watching any and all TV programs; started later than most other goals.]

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

[Done, with a few temporary holdouts like the Baptists. The Party's modern Global Warming campaign seems to have finally knocked down the Baptists, who had firmly resisted the push toward gay ministers etc.]

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

[Done. Again not publicly known in '58]

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

[Done. Special credit to Comrade Breyer on the last bit. The black-robed saboteurs have thoroughly shredded all of the Constitution except the trivial details of "terms of employment": 2 years for House, 6 years for Senate, Pres must be natural-born, etc. For some reason they've never bothered to shred those bits, so I must assume that those bits are helping to bring down America. Black-robed saboteurs are thorough, meticulous and consistent; they never accidentally miss an opportunity to destroy the country.]

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

[Done and prophetic.]

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the grounds that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

[The latter part, emphasis on Russian history, is the only point in this list where Skousen missed. Or at least the only point that was never accomplished by the Party. Maybe it wasn't very important to the Party.]

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

[Done, mainly by Comrades Johnson and Nixon.]

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

[Apparently done, or at least such laws are no longer enforced.]

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

[Done. Skousen didn't see quite far enough on this one, since Congressional Committees now serve only to investigate and punish anti-Communists.]

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

[Didn't need to discredit; instead the FBI was turned into an agency to burn Christians and prosecute Americans who dare to oppose our internal enemies.]

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

[Happened, but unions were turning obsolete at the same time, so it didn't really matter.]

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

[Done and relevant.]

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand (or treat).

[Again wonderfully prophetic. This campaign didn't begin until the mid-70s.]

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

[Redundant with #38]

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

[Done and prophetic.]

41. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

[This one is subtle because the 'rising up' has never been part of the public front of the Party. If you watch Comrades Sharpton and Jackson in operation, you can see the results, though....]

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

[This was actively underway in '58, proudly and openly sponsored by Communists, so it's true but not at all prophetic. A few of those African nations are now starting to regret what Communism did to them, and considering re-colonization.]

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

[Thanks to Comrade Carter again.]

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

[I don't know the Connally Reservation, but the latter part is obviously working out quite nicely.]

Newt appeared briefly on Prince Walid News a few minutes ago. Said that the only one of the [declared] candidates who is thinking boldly enough is Obama.

Bravo! All the brand-R politicians and talkers have been zapping Obama for proposing an attack on Pakistan; all say it's "irresponsible" because "Pakistan is our good ally and friend."

Any rational observer of facts can see perfectly well that Pakistan is our enemy. Though I suspect Obama's motives are not quite simple and factual, he has still spoken the truth on this one point. And Newt, whose motives are rational and factual, has the guts to acknowledge it publicly.

While all the focus is properly on the hostages held by savage Mohammedans in Afghanistan, some interesting and hopeful things are happening within Korea itself.

Dear Leader Kim may be on the verge of quietly folding under a number of internal and external pressures. For one thing, he seems to be ill; rumors of heart attacks and long absences from public view. For another, he may be feeling the same shrinking sensation that the IRA and Qaddafi felt after 9/11. When faced with the unparalleled nastiness of Osama, other autocrats and terrorists find it hard to continue ... they must be thinking approximately: "Do I look like that? Do I really want to be remembered for looking like that? And if so, can I afford to outdo Osama?"

A new carrot-and-stick project from the South may give Dear Ronery Boy a way to save face by turning his country toward capitalism and modernity without immediately losing control. Much like the Chinese model.

...Ex-prime minister and a presidential hopeful Lee Hae-chan said, "North Korea hopes to establish industrial parks in Nampo, Wonsan, Shinuiju and Najin, and tourism projects in Mt. Baekdu, Mt. Myohyang and Mt. Guwol." He added it was “highly likely” that the two Koreas will agree on large-scale economic cooperation during their planned summit, which would lead to “an economic boom” in the North.

In a lecture on Wednesday, President Roh Moo-hyun’s special advisor promised the summit “will be a watershed that will end the economic division of the two Koreas and help revive the North Korean economy.”

In April last year, the Presidential Committee ... finished formulating an economic initiative for the Korean Peninsula. Its report to the president envisages developing five economic zones: a Kaesong (North)-Paju (South) zone, a Mt. Kumgang (North)-Mt. Seorak (South) zone, a Shinuiju (North)-Dandong (China) zone, and a Najin (North)-Khasan (Russia) zone.

Those crossover zones are especially interesting, offering a built-in 'gate' for learning and culture to China and the South. As Eastern Europe demonstrated, opening those cultural gates leads inevitably to collapse of totalitarian regimes. Result is not Young Democracy, just [comparatively!] decent and normal countries.

= = = = =

To be clear: The carrot is lots of money, food and petroleum. The stick is the requirement to open these economic zones.

She has been puzzled by the recent refusal to name the enemy or acknowledge the existence of war, and the apparent decision to stifle all discussion of possible enemy action or involvement in events like the Mpls bridge collapse.

She has been annoyed for a long time by the fake "measurement" of inflation used by official economists to set things like interest rates and Social Security income. "Core inflation" is "measured" by removing all the items that inflate, so you're left with the items that don't change.

A new puzzle provided the key to all of this. Last week, Bush invited several loyal brand-R talkers to a confidential conclave, where notes and recordings were prohibited. Only feeeeeeliiiings could be conveyed to the proletariat. Glenn Beck was one of the invited insiders, and he said that Bush is sharp, incisive and harsh when in an unrecorded situation like this, but whenever he's being recorded by cameras he turns into the familiar bumbling idiot who can't speak English.

This bizarre scenario finally struck a note and connected all three mysteries.

Answer: Bush is running a Quantum Government.

All three mysteries resemble the familiar Heisenberg principle* by which an atomic particle exists only while it's being measured. By refusing to measure inflation, we can make it disappear. By refusing to name the enemy, we can make war disappear. By refusing to record Bush, we can magically transform him from a mental defective into a Churchillian leader who is never verified.

See how easy it is?

Of course all of this is bullshit. The mysteries and contradictions of quantum physics fall away if you abandon the notion of particles and treat everything as energy carried in wave-like patterns. Waves exist whether you're looking or not. Inflation exists no matter how you measure it. And we are really under constant attack by Mohammed-fueled Arabs and their allies, whether we name them or not. In each case, we will do a better job of answering reality and solving the problems if we get rid of the Quantum idea, no matter how exciting and avant-garde it may seem, and simply work with the dull old physical reality.

= = = = =

*Tech note: Prof Polistra knows that Heisenberg's theorem is really far more specific and narrow, but the common meaning of the Uncertainty Principle is a useful metaphor.

Bravo Sarko! He was vacationing in New Hampshire, and a couple of American Communists (called, for obscure historical reasons, "journalists") were harrassing him. They were actually following his boat. So Sarko turned around, boarded their boat and gave them a tongue-lashing in French. Full story here.

This man should be emperor of the world.

However! The most interesting aspect of this story is not Sarko's refreshing behavior. The most interesting thing is that he is in the US, apparently trying to keep a low profile until this incident. Not far from the Bush family retreat at Kennebunkport, which may be relevant.

Why would a French President take his vacation in America, when France has so many excellent resort spots? This gives credence to the growing sensation that something large is about ready to happen, something large enough to require participation of the full Alliance.

Reminds me of the secret shipboard meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill, near Newfoundland, on August 5, 1941. The Alliance was set up at this meeting.

"They got pulled over and had just enough suspicious things to warrant investigation. We don't think there's that much to it. They had some materials to make some pretty good-sized homemade fireworks but not bomb stuff."

No charges were filed in the case...

Yessir, Mister FBI man, we'll go along. This is just a couple of fine upstanding young Middle Eastern ENGINEERING STUDENTS with good old Quaker names, just out for a jolly time with a trunk full of fireworks. Why, I used to work with engineering students, and fondly recall how every Friday they would say "Hey fellas, let's all drive down to the nearest military base that stores nuclear weapons and has a jail holding enemy soldiers, and scare the crap out of them with heavy explosives!" A fine student lark, merry hi-jinks indeed.

Interestingly, this story seems to have been yanked down at Lucianne.com, which was covering it with the usual diligence until an hour ago. Might be a technical glitch, or something worse.

Calling Diogenes! The alleged and so-called "Moderate Muslims" or "Peaceful Muslims", so often falsely claimed, may actually exist. In Korea. Their imams came out strongly and firmly against the hostage-taking on the first day of the crisis, with no buts.

Polistra likes to learn from dogs, our perpetual teachers of civilization. Dogs get straight to the end. When the goal is truly important, a dog will take a straight line to reach it, regardless of obstacles. When there's a horse that needs herding, a border collie will leap through barbed wire to reach it. When there's a snake menacing a family member, a chihuahua will jump in front of it and take the bite.

Conservatives like to criticize leftists by saying "Marxists believe the end justifies the means." This statement is factually true but woefully incomplete. "End justifies means" is not a characteristic of Marxism; it's a trademark of Marxists because MARXISTS ARE SERIOUS ABOUT THEIR ENDS AND NON-MARXISTS ARE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT OUR ENDS. That's the difference.

Worst of all, non-Marxists generally get so tangled up in discussing and implementing the methods [e.g. insuring that judges have the last word even when we know the judges are enemy agents; following the Geneva Convention even though it was specifically meant to discourage terrorism, not to assist terrorists] that they forget about the ends entirely. Leftists are only too happy to assist our entrance into this briar patch, as when they get Nixon, Bush or Gonzalez immersed in discussions of that grand old question "What did you know and when did you know it?" This generates all sorts of defenses and research, and accomplishes precisely nothing except to move the enemy closer to his goal. The only appropriate answer to such questions is as follows, verbatim: "FUCK OFF, YOU GODDAMN COMMIE." Perhaps accompanied by an appropriate action, such as "Edward Kennedy, I hereby arrest you for treason. Marshals, shackle him. I will try and execute him immediately, here and now."

When I see THAT happen, I will know that we are finally serious about defending civilization. When I see THAT happen, we will finally have a chance of winning this war.

The Iraq section of this war has become pure process with no end at all. Its original plan, as formulated by those dreaded Neocons, did include a proper and meaningful goal: to show Arab tyrants that sponsoring terrorism was a futile course. As soon as we captured Saddam, we should have killed him on the spot and begun withdrawing, leaving Arab-on-Arab chaos behind. That would have accomplished the purpose of transferring futility to the enemy while leaving us free to fight in other ways and places. Instead, we're locked in an inescapable process with the nominal but worse-than-delusional goal of imposing Free And Fair Elections on Arabs. Worse-than-delusional because we've already seen that such "elections" lead directly to rule by the enemy. So we own all the futility.

As said before, the experiments of history have already been performed. We have the data. We know how to convince a fierce and determined enemy to stop. Oddly enough, the proper method is democratic in a way, though it has nothing at all to do with elections. Fact is, any successful tyrant rules with the enthusiastic consent of a majority of his people. When that consent disappears, his regime collapses, though not always immediately. We accomplished this collapse in 1945, after three years of killing soldiers and generals had failed to remove the people's consent. What finally did the trick? Killing huge numbers of civilians, with no regard for the traditions and laws of fighting. Churchill and Roosevelt violated all the rules of civilization for several months, used totally evil methods and means for a short time, because they were certain of their own good ends. They knew that Britain and its allies were the permanent carriers of humane civilization, they had tried all lesser methods without success, and they also knew that decency and goodness would leave this earth for a very long time if the Krauts and Nips continued their enthusiastic consent for imperial fascism.

We will have to do the same thing sooner or later in the current war, because we are the people who learn from dogs, and Mohammedans are the people who refuse to learn from dogs. If we continue to agonize about the Christian purity of our methods, we will simply die and there will be nobody left in the world to carry and defend Christianity.

An extreme irony: As the bridge was collapsing, Rep. Oberstar (the NON-ENEMY congressman from the Mpls area) was on the House floor managing debate on a bill to increase funding for infrastructure on the upper Mississippi, and he was discussing problems with locks, dams and bridges. He really deserves to shout "I told you so".

More logical suspicion: The feds have ordered a crash program to "inspect" all similar bridges. First: this doesn't make sense from an engineering standpoint; these bridges were built at different times and experience different climates, different levels of maintenance and traffic conditions. Thus they shouldn't all be ready to collapse right now. The only reason for an emergency inspection of all such bridges RIGHT NOW is if we suspect the enemy has planted, shall we say, foreign objects, on all such bridges. Second: the inspection method doesn't look appropriate. Fatigue assessment generally requires a long-term set of precise measurements, as detailed in this research paper which happens to deal with the Mpls I35W bridge. You won't really learn much by a single visual inspection WITH BINOCULARS FROM BELOW, as the inspection teams are doing. The latter method would be highly effective for detecting foreign objects placed on the structure of the bridge.

The predictable: As usual the brand-R and brand-D politicos are using this event to create a false choice. D says we should be spending less on rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and more on our own. R says we should be spending less on social programs and other 'pork'. In some ways both are right, but unfortunately neither side has any right to say it, because neither side has put any money into infrastructure for the last 20 years. Anyway, it's a matter of will, not a zero-sum game. For instance, Spokane is not a rich city by any means, but it has managed to rebuild three major bridges, pretty much from the ground up, in the last four years, using a mix of bonds, state and federal money. All without depriving other useful gov't programs of any funding.

Homeland Security "assured" us that the Mpls bridge collapse was not caused by enemy action. I note that Prince Walid News Channel has already taken this "assurance" for gospel, and has already totally excluded hostile action from their thinking.

Sorry, that doesn't work. You simply cannot reach that conclusion within the first few hours after the destruction. First, the Mpls-StPaul metro area is a hotbed of enemy agents, so hot that they've even elected their own enemy penetrator to Congress. Second, we know that the enemy has been trying to target bridges, and has cased and examined many of them. Third, the collapse happened suddenly and nearly simultaneously, after reports of "jackhammer" sounds. This pattern resembles a deliberate explosion more than a typical structural failure, though the latter is certainly not excluded.

An official in DC could reach a positive conclusion instantly if he had info about the activities of local enemy groups, or perhaps a verified claim of responsibility. But he could only say immediately that this was not an act of war if he had continuous security footage of all sides of the bridge for the last few years, showing conclusively that nobody had planted any foreign objects on the bridge. Such footage might exist, but I severely doubt it.

= = = = =

Friday: It still wouldn't be possible to determine for sure that no explosives were used. I'd guess it will be several days before the wreckage is even stable enough to permit that sort of search. Nevertheless, we see the crawl on the cable stations running like this : " ... CAUSE OF DISASTER UNKNOWN ... DISASTER NOT CAUSED BY TERRORISM ... NICOLE RICHIE PREGNANT ..." Doesn't the juxtaposition even catch anyone's attention? Am I the only one in this country with a functional brain? If the cause is UNKNOWN you can't say the cause is NOT TERRORISM.

Obviously we're back in 1992. Bad things just sort of happen, and we are forbidden to even consider the possibility that we have an enemy. All we can do is put teddy bears on the owies and hope the Dow keeps climbing.

About Me

Polistra was named after the original townsite of Manhattan (the one in Kansas). When I was growing up in Manhattan, I spent a lot of time exploring by foot, bike, and car. I discovered the ruins of an old mill along Wildcat Creek, and decided (inaccurately) that it was the remains of the original site of Polistra. Accurate or not, I've always liked the name, with its echoes of Poland (an under-appreciated friend of freedom) and stars. ==== The title icon is explained here. ==== Switchover: This 2007 entry marks a sharp change in worldview from neocon to pure populist. ===== The long illustrated story of Polistra's Dream is a time-travel fable, attempting to answer the dangerous revision of New Deal history propagated by Amity Shlaes. The Dream has 8 episodes, linked in a chain from the first. This entry explains the Shlaes connection.